[Angstrom-devel] Maintenance of unstable feed

[Rod Whitby]

Paul Sokolovsky wrote:
>   That's what we're looking for for Angstrom too, asymptotically.
> Except that you don't say here how you solve problem of testing,
> especially, community testing (and that's 80-90% of the entire
> testing an OpenSource project can afford).
> 
>   But later, you say...
> 
>> Yes, our policy for slugos-packages is that if it compiles then it can
>> be enabled for the feed.  Since the autobuilder works directly from the
>> latest OE head, then our developers have direct control over what the
>> autobuilder builds, with no middle-man involved.
> 
> ...that you don't have any testing at all, except for purely formal
> buildability one!

As Linus Torvalds says: "Testing is for users".

The person who adds the package to <distro>-packages.bb usually actually
tests that it runs, but even if they don't then it's not a problem - if
a user reports a problem with a new package, then putting it in the feed
has served a useful purpose (i.e. it's either fixed, or it's marked as
having a deficiency, or it's removed as being unfixable).

And BTW, the people who added the package to OE in the first place have
usually tested it as well.

I say package feeds should be like open source code - release early and
release often, and let the users find the bugs.

-- Rod